Mississippi Roll

‘Damn!’ Ray said. ‘We’ve got to get there, fast! We should have staked out someplace closer, dammit!’

‘The Schröder’s engines are starting. There’s commotion on the Coast Guard cutter. Lights are going on all over her!’

‘Angel—’ Ray said.

‘I can’t help you,’ she said numbly. ‘You know I can’t.’ She couldn’t look him in the eyes.

Ray stood before her, took her arms, and lifted her from her chair. Supporting her weight, he held her upright before him.

‘You have to,’ he said. ‘But not me. You have to help those people on that goddamned boat. There’s no telling what will happen to them.’

‘I’m sorry—’

‘I know you are,’ Ray said earnestly. ‘And I know you’re hurt. I understand if you can’t do this anymore. But if you have anything left, now’s the time to dig down deep and find it. Just get me there – that’s all you have to do. I promise.’

Ray could feel her body stiffen, her legs take her weight, and she stood upright, on her own.

‘All right,’ she said, ‘but we’d better step outside.’

Ray smiled. ‘Good point,’ he said. He turned to the others. ‘Follow as quickly as you can.’

He tossed the keys to the Escalade to Huginn and hand in hand he and the Angel ran out the motel room door, down the hallway, and to a side exit off the first floor.

The night was hot and muggy, as usual for New Orleans. They stood together in the parking lot, bathed in the light of the incandescent bulbs illuminating the rows of cars.

The Angel put her arms around him. ‘I could drink a case of you,’ she murmured, and pulled him close.

He put his arms around her and they kissed. Ray felt as if he could feel the hurt and need in her and kissed her as if to draw it all out of her and into himself. After a moment he felt heat all around him and he knew it for the touch of the unburning flames that covered her wings, and suddenly they were airborne. Ray could feel the rush of the breeze from her beating wings upon his face and he laughed aloud as the Angel’s strength bore him effortlessly through the sky.

The city of New Orleans was spread below them, its streets outlined by lamplights and rows of car headlights moving like tracers over the ground. After the Angel gained sufficient altitude she turned toward the river and the bend bordering the French Quarter. It took only a minute or two, traveling as the angel flies, until they could see the lighted deck of the Schröder moving on the river, being pursued by half a dozen launches as well as the Coast Guard cutter Triton, which was quickly gaining on her.

‘She’s under way,’ Ray said.

The Angel’s expression was serene as a Madonna’s. Ray felt a stab of happiness to see her so. All the cares and worry and anxiety were washed away from her face as she bore them both through the sky.

Ray frowned as he looked down at the ship. ‘She’s moving pretty fast,’ he said. ‘The cutter is trying to block her way – they’re going to collide!’

The ships hit with the anguished scream of shrieking metal as the Angel spiraled down to the Schröder’s main deck. The much larger freighter smashed the cutter aside as if she were a plastic toy. The Coast Guard vessel buckled where the freighter’s prow struck her amidships. The Schröder continued to plow serenely upstream as the Triton broke into two pieces. The launches trailing the runaway freighter stopped to pick up sailors who’d abandoned the wrecked and rapidly sinking Triton.

The Angel touched down on the stern of the freighter, unnoticed in the darkness.

‘All right,’ Ray said quietly. ‘You stay here. I’m going to go see what the hell is going on.’

The Angel shook her head. ‘No, I’m coming with you.’

‘You going to be all right?’ he asked, his expression concerned.

‘Maybe. I don’t know. But I do know that there’s someone I wouldn’t mind seeing again.’

‘All right. If you’re sure.’

‘I already said that I’m not.’ Ray didn’t mind the impatience in her voice and in her expression. It was at least a sign of engagement, of a return to the world. ‘I’ll be right behind you.’ She smiled and Ray liked that even better. ‘One sword at least thy right shall guard.’

Ray remembered those same words spoken a dozen years ago and moved off into the darkness feeling whole for the first time in a long time.

The decks were deserted and quiet. His first thought was for the refugees. They found a companionway headed down into the hold and cat-footed it into the eerily lit space where they bivouacked. The lighting was provided by strung bulbs of low wattage that gleamed like will-o’-the-wisps hovering over a swamp. The air still smelled terrible. As they went silently down the ladder, they could see the mass of people sitting and standing in close ranks in the cramped hold, three men covering them with automatic rifles.

‘Jesus,’ one of them was saying, ‘what a sorry-assed lot. Be lucky if one in ten of them was worth keeping.’

‘They are a pretty useless bunch of rag-heads. Still, I reckon some of them will bring a nice price. The rest, well, fuck ’em. They can go down with the ship when we scuttle it.’

‘Hey,’ said the third, the one in the middle, ‘give me a cig, will you? I need something to cover up the stench in here.’

Ray reached the hold’s floor, maybe twenty feet behind them.

‘I need a light myself.’ The three men sidled together, keeping their rifles pointed at the mass of people in front of them. Many of the refugees, at least those who hadn’t sunken into complete lethargy, must have seen Ray creeping as stealthily as a panther, but no one gave him away with either a look or a gesture.

One of the men cradled his rifle to his side under his arm while he bent down to light his cigarette with the match offered him by the middle man, while the third reached for a packet he kept in his shirt pocket.

Morons, Ray thought, and when he was six feet away sprang with his arms widespread.

He grabbed the collars of the man to the right and to the left and smashed both their heads into that of the man in the middle. The colliding skulls made satisfyingly loud sounds. Ray held the two up by their collars as their knees sagged while the third slipped silently to the hold’s floor.

The refugees looked almost as stunned as Ray’s victims as he shook the two guards like a terrier with rats in its jaws, just to make sure they were out, then swiftly checked them all for more weapons. ‘Well, don’t just stand there,’ he told the refugees, ‘someone tie them up.’

Twenty-odd prisoners leaped forward in response. It probably would have gone more efficiently if they didn’t keep getting in one another’s way, but Ray let them have their fun. In a few moments the three were tied and gagged and Ray had distributed their guns to refugees who professed familiarity with the weapons.

‘Keep your eye on them while we take care of the rest,’ Ray told them.

‘Let us go with you,’ one of the Kazakhs offered.

Ray shook his head. ‘This job is for professionals. You stay here and guard these bozos.’

They reluctantly accepted his advice, and Ray returned to the stairway, where the Angel stood watching him.

‘I didn’t think you’d need my help,’ she said.

Ray snorted. ‘Not with those idiots. But there’s five left. Let’s check the bridge.’

The Angel nodded, and they went up the walkway to the deck above, where all was still darkness. Ahead, in the bow, they could see the lit bridge and the figures who occupied it, who were unidentifiable at this distance.

They moved quietly toward the light. Halfway there, Ray put out his arm in warning and he and the Angel stopped. They could hear something slithering before them in the darkness.

‘The snake,’ the Angel said quietly, and suddenly before them loomed IBT.

Ray thrust himself forward between him and the Angel.

‘Stop right there,’ Ray said coldly, ‘or I will seriously fuck you up.’

The human part of IBT’s body was raised up. He was as tall as a tall man standing, while the coils of his snake body writhed behind him.

‘Who are you?’

‘I’m Billy Ray,’ Ray replied, ‘and I owe you big for what you did to my wife.’

‘Wife?’ The expression on the joker-ace’s face went puzzled. ‘I don’t—’ He suddenly caught sight of the Angel beside Ray. ‘She’s your wife?’

‘That’s right,’ Ray said in a flat voice.

‘I remember,’ the Infamous Black Tongue said. ‘It was in Kazakhstan, on the battlefield. Neither of us were in our right minds then.’

‘Whatever—’ Ray said, and the Angel took his arm, stopping him before he could move.

‘He’s right, Billy,’ the Angel said. ‘It’s what you’ve been telling me all this time.’

‘I am sorry for what happened,’ IBT said.

‘As am I,’ the Angel replied. ‘But there’s no time for apologies now. What’s happening on the bridge?’

‘We made a deal with the man who calls himself Witness. A million dollars to take us to refuge in Cuba. But it was all a trap – he just wanted the money and people he could sell into servitude. He plans to scuttle the ship once we’re out to sea, take off the ones he thinks would be useful, and let the old and infirm drown.’

‘Where’s the Witness?’ Ray asked.

‘On the bridge. He has Olena.’ IBT looked desperate. ‘We have to rescue her, but he has guns.’

For the first time Ray noticed that blood was oozing out of several segments of IBT’s colorful banded serpent body.

‘You’ve been shot,’ Ray said.

IBT shook his head. ‘That’s not important. He has Olena. We must rescue her.’

‘All right. Calm down,’ Ray said as he saw the desperate look return to the joker’s face. ‘Let’s see. There’s five of them—’

IBT shook his head. ‘Three. He sent out three men to guard the refugees in the hold—’

‘We took care of them,’ Ray said.

‘—and then two sentries to patrol the deck,’ IBT said, then added with some satisfaction, ‘and I took care of them.’

‘Okay,’ Ray said. He didn’t ask for details. ‘Uh, you didn’t run into a tall, pale, skinny guy in a dark suit, did you? Probably wearing a patch over one eye.’

‘No,’ IBT said.

‘Good. He’s one of us.’

IBT nodded.

‘All right,’ Ray said. ‘Time to take the bridge.’

It took only moments to arrange the ambush. IBT led them to a place of concealment where they had a decent view of the control room through the front windows shielding the bridge deck. The windows were already shot out, shattered in IBT’s original hopeless assault. They could see six people in the dim light of the chamber. Two were thugs with guns, one was Olena, the other two were the captain of the Schröder and his mate, who was steering the ship. The last—

‘It’s him,’ the Angel said.

It was the Witness. Ray had encountered him first during the mission on which he’d met the Midnight Angel. He knew that this Witness and the Angel had a history between them, but she’d never revealed the extent of it and he’d never asked her. ‘Well,’ he said, ‘no sense in putting this off.’ He looked at IBT. ‘Get in place. Move when you hear the shots.’

‘Give me three minutes,’ IBT said.

‘You got it,’ Ray said, and the Tongue slithered off into the darkness.

‘You don’t want to do this,’ the Angel said.

‘Kill these guys?’ Ray shrugged. ‘Not particularly.’

‘No.’ The Angel smiled. ‘You’re not cold-blooded. Hot-blooded, yes. But you can’t kill from ambush.’

‘There’s always a first time,’ Ray said.

‘Not if there’s another way.’

‘I told you. All you had to do is get me here. I would take care of the rest.’

‘I love you,’ the Angel said.

Ray smiled. ‘That’s good to hear.’

‘I know.’ She bowed her head. ‘Save me from evil, Lord,’ she prayed for the first time in months, ‘and heal this warrior’s heart.’

Her wings appeared and she shot up into the sky. She was above the sight line from the bridge in a second, a reverse meteor burning through the sky. In her hands, Ray saw, was her flaming sword. She flew above the bridge, cut her way through the roof, and dropped down on top of them. The sword cut two swaths through the air, left and right, and the barrels of the guns dropped, severed in two. She broke her grip on the sword’s hilt and it disappeared, going wherever the hell it went when she didn’t need it. Then she used her fists on them. They didn’t stand a chance.

‘You!’ the Witness said.

‘Me,’ the Angel agreed, and advanced on him.

He backed away, saying, ‘Not again, not again!’

‘Hmm,’ Ray said, and fired two shots into the air.

IBT burst through the door and threw a couple of loops of his body around the Witness.

‘The serpent!’ the Witness screamed. ‘Oh, God, not the serpent! Save me, oh, God, save me!’

IBT started to squeeze and the Witness screamed like a little girl.

Next to Ray, Maximillian Klingensmith appeared from out of the shadows.

‘Where you been?’ Ray asked.

‘Hiding from that snake guy,’ he said. ‘Everything under control?’

‘I guess so,’ Ray said.

♣

But, no, Ray realized. Their troubles were far from over.

He stood in what remained of the bridge, with the Angel, Olena, IBT, and the Schröder’s captain and mate. The Witness, who’d fainted dead away when the IBT had grabbed him, was tied up with his surviving men in the hold. The Schröder was still steaming upriver, being chased by more launches and followed on the road running alongside the river by a line of screaming police cars, their sirens wailing in the night.

‘Now what?’ Olena said miserably. ‘Our last hope is gone. Cuba was our last haven. What can we do now? We can’t let them be taken to Rathlin. That’s a prison sentence, a virtual death sentence.’

They all exchanged glances.

‘Well,’ Ray said, ‘far be it from me to encourage illegal behavior, but I think your best chance is to run for it.’

‘What?’ Olena said.

Ray shrugged. ‘Find someplace, run the ship aground, and leg it. Some of the refugees will probably be caught, but you can hardly have a more emotionally heart-touching revelation of their plight. The publicity will be killer. In the meantime, many will get away. It’s a big country. I’m sure there’s people out there willing to help, one way or another.’

‘But you, you say this? You represent the government.’

Ray sighed. ‘I’ve represented the government for forty years, and if it’s one thing I’ve learned, it’s that the government isn’t always right. The right thing for them in this case was to help your people, not turn their backs on them.’

‘The Lord,’ the Angel said quietly, ‘helps those who help themselves.’

‘There you go,’ Ray said.

Olena and IBT looked at each other. Then she looked at the captain.

‘Can this be done safely?’

‘Relatively,’ he said.

‘But your ship?’

He sighed. ‘My ship is old and so am I. I think we are both ready to retire.’

Olena took a deep breath. ‘All right,’ she said. ‘Let’s do it.’

♠

‘Are we doing the right thing here, Angel?’ Ray asked as they watched the crowd of refugees swarm the deck.

‘I think you’ve given them their best chance,’ she said.

They looked at Munnin. The patch was back over his left eye. ‘I see nothing,’ he said.

‘That’s probably for the best,’ Ray said. ‘Better hang on.’

They all grabbed onto the derrick in the center of the deck as the captain ran the ship aground. It hit the riverbank in the midst of a dark industrial area that consisted of large buildings set in a warren of narrow streets and alleys. The ship shuddered with a groaning cry of old metal tearing. Although the three kept their feet, on the deck below them many of the refugees went down. Some skidded and rolled, but most all got to their feet immediately and it was every man, woman, and child for themselves. They swarmed down gangplanks and ladders. The confident swimmers went over the side and into the water below.

The launches following them stopped dead, the police cars racing up the road skidded to a halt. The three SCARE agents watched the show unfold. It was like watching a surrealistic version of an old Keystone Kops movie with sound effects.

The refugees, vastly outnumbering their pursuers, were fleeing in all directions. Some few, of course, were caught.

Gunfire erupted from one police boat as someone started shooting at those who were swimming for it. Suddenly a vast, dark form erupted out of the river. It slammed into the launch, half lifting it out of the water. The launch rocked uncontrollably, and to Ray’s astonishment he realized that the attacker was a giant alligator. It was the largest gator that Ray had ever seen, fifteen feet long if it was an inch. The gator managed to hook a leg over the edge of the boat and clambered aboard like an avenging demon. It swept the boat clean of cops using its tail and then bellowed, its cry roaring eerily into the night. Using its snout as a battering ram, it sank the boat, then slipped under the water.

‘That’s not something you see every day,’ Ray remarked.

A barge rowed by zombies cut through the water, picking up a handful of refugees. Ray could see the Handsmith and his son among them before it disappeared into the darkness.

A golden creature, the winged Tulpar, appeared on the shore and charged the lead car in the police caravan that was chasing refugees who were fleeing into the warren of warehouses and industrial plants, smashing in its hood with her razor-sharp hooves. She leaped up onto the car’s roof, crumpling it, and managed to cripple half a dozen more before vanishing into the night.

The show was interrupted when Evangelique Jones appeared in one of the launches, looking up at them on the Schröder’s deck and shouting.

‘What’s going on here?’ she cried. ‘Why aren’t you helping to round up these illegal aliens?’

‘Not my assignment,’ Ray called down.

‘I’ll have your badge for this!’ Jones screamed at him.

‘All right,’ Ray said. He took it out and scaled it down at her. As usual, his aim was impeccable. It hit her in her ample bosom and fell down at her feet. She stared at him, her jaw dropping.

Ray looked at the Angel. She laughed aloud for the first time in way too long. Ray smiled at her. Her aim wasn’t as good. Hers plunked down into the river somewhere near the launch’s bow. Ray looked at Max.

‘You might want to hang on to yours.’

‘Yes, sir,’ the young agent said stoically.

‘It was nice working with you,’ Ray said.

‘Nice working with you, sir,’ Max replied.

Arm in arm, Ray and the Angel walked down one of the gangplanks leading to the riverbank. He felt relieved. Almost light-headed. For the first time in years it seemed as if nothing, not a single part of his body, hurt.

‘What now?’ the Angel asked.

Ray pursed his lips. ‘I don’t know,’ he said, and saying it felt very good.

They’d walked a couple of miles down the riverbank back toward New Orleans, when Ray suddenly stopped.

‘Crap,’ he said. ‘I forgot all about the Witness and his men tied up in the Schröder’s hold.’

The Angel looked at him. ‘Would you think less of me if I told you that I hadn’t?’

Ray shrugged. ‘Oh well. Maybe someone will find them.’

Laughing, they resumed their stroll, heading toward the rising sun.

♣ ♦ ♠ ♥

In the Shadow of Tall Stacks

Part 3

Wilbur Leathers felt steam hissing in the boilers and surging through the lines as Travis Cottle, the current chief engineer – a coffee- and cigarette-addicted middle-aged man with graying and thinning brown hair – checked and tweaked the boilers, lines, and engines for the Natchez’s impending departure from New Orleans. Cottle was rather obsessive, in Wilbur’s opinion, always consulting the pressure gauges within the system – which dropped briefly whenever Wilbur borrowed steam from the lines, random failures of the system that seemed to infuriate Cottle as he could find no explanation for the pressure drops. If Wilbur wanted to, he could plunge his hands into one of the lines and draw the steam into him right now, allowing it to fill his body, and sending Cottle off on yet another paroxysm of double-checking all the lines and recalibrating the gauges.

Wilbur told himself he’d do that later. Maybe he’d even allow himself to become steamily visible, and if a passenger or two glimpsed him in the dark, it would only add to the popularity of the Natchez – though he’d make damn certain it wasn’t that obnoxious Dead Report crew; he didn’t intend to give them the pleasure.

Still, he could almost hear the shriek of alarm and wonder that would result. ‘Oh my God! Look! That’s Steam Wilbur! We’re actually seeing him! He’s real!’ But later. Later. Maybe. He’d left Cottle to his work, finding something on the main deck that interested him far more.

He could hear the Jokertown Boys doing their late show up in the Bayou Lounge – all of the passengers seemed to be there; the main deck was largely deserted and the main gangway had been withdrawn. The Quarter lights threw their futile beams into an overcast and occasionally dripping night sky. The promenades on the deck were empty, the passengers nearly all choosing to stay inside against the threatening weather.

There was some commotion going on downriver from where they were berthed. Wilbur could see a constellation of blue and red flashing lights crowding the shore a few miles downriver, and spotlights tore at the low clouds nearby, though whatever action they were illuminating was just beyond the downriver bend. He wondered what was happening, and if it had to do with that joker freighter.

JoHanna Potts, the head clerk, waited near the head of the gangway along with a quartet of deckhands. Jack, an older Cajun man whose skin looked as crinkled and dark as alligator hide, walked anxiously along the Natchez’s landing at the river’s edge; Jack had been hired as one of the bartenders for this cruise. Jack and JoHanna put Wilbur in mind of the old nursery rhyme about Jack Sprat and his wife: JoHanna was a wide and heavy African-American woman whose wrists and neck glittered with strands of gaudy costume jewelry; Jack, conversely, was rail-thin, normally dressed in dark pants and the white jacket he wore as bartender. But he wasn’t dressed that way now; in fact, his clothes seemed to be in tatters and soaked besides, and Wilbur couldn’t imagine what the old Cajun was doing out there.

As Wilbur pondered the scene, a small barge emerged from the darkness of the river. Wilbur stared at the craft in shock: it was being rowed by what appeared to be several … zombies. At least that’s what the rotting, peeling, and discolored flesh of their bodies, the jerky movements as they paddled the barge, and the horrific smell that the breeze off the river would indicate. Jack was hurrying over to the barge and helping perhaps twenty people inside out onto the landing. When they were all on the shore, the zombie crew – if that’s truly what they were – pushed away again, vanishing quickly into the night and heading back downriver.

‘Go on,’ he heard JoHanna say to the deckhands, who swung the gangway over to the dock once more. Wilbur went to the rail of the main deck; he could see Jack herding the people from the barge toward the Natchez. JoHanna waved to them, and the clot of people moved quickly up the gangway and onto the boat. The first of them came up the gangway and approached JoHanna; in the deck lights, Wilbur saw the man more clearly: a face neither young nor old, lined and weathered. His clothing was ragged, soiled, and tattered; most strange was the fact that his hands were covered by burlap, the rough cloth tied around them at his wrists. It didn’t look to Wilbur as if there were actual hands under those improvised mittens, nor did the man extend his hand to JoHanna. ‘I’m Jyrgal,’ he said, his voice heavily accented, his words halting. ‘Some call me the Handsmith. We are very grateful to you for your help.’ Sounds Russian, Wilbur thought, then he saw the others with him.

A boy stood behind Jyrgal, looking like a kid trying to play a ghost for Halloween, his head protruding from a simple sheet. The boy’s skin glistened and seemed to be covered in some gelatinous goo. Wilbur couldn’t see the boy’s hands; they were wrapped in a fold of the sheet. Jokers. Another man stepped up behind the two, also a joker, with a scaled, almost fishlike face, and a beaver’s tail protruding from underneath the hem of the long overcoat he wore. It struck Wilbur suddenly as the others came onto the deck of the Natchez, perhaps twenty of them: These people. These jokers … They must be from the Schröder – some of the Kazakh refugees. What in the world are they doing here on my boat?